According to copywriting legend Eugene Schwartz, a headline’s main job isn’t to sell; it’s to gain the readers attention and compel them to read the ad.  And this is sound advice, but the Internet also requires one other thing in today’s web 2.0 copy world… Step 1. Scent: Web copy add...

I guess it was professional curiosity, but I actually clicked one of those facelift-in-a-bottle ads while visiting some blog.  And hell if I wasn’t intrigued by the landing page’s sleaze-bag persuasive techniques. Take a look at the screen shot I took of the landing page.  What do you thin...

That’s my standard response when asked about Social Media.  That’s not to say technology is unimportant, but that technology never really changes how people behave, think, and feel.  Human nature drives that; technology only changes the constraints previously placed on human preferences. If yo...

“There’s no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you’ll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?â€� - Elaine in the movie Airplane Does looking at an instrumentation panel like this (picture on the left) create feelings of infor...

Click here to view the embedded video. Get Elastic’s recent post on reducing friction kicks butt - providing incredibly clear explanations of too-common Website flaws along with great examples of how to do it right.  I wish I wrote it.  Not only did the article reduced me to green-faced envy...

When asking, “Do I really need this� about a product, no one thinks, “Nah, I’ll just make my own sunglasses [or whatever] instead�  - yet prospects do think exactly that about (many) services. And the less knowledge your potential client has in your field, the harder it is for them to gau...

Holidays or no holidays, there’s simply less money to go around. As obvious as that statement is, many still seem to deny the obvious implication: you won’t keep profit margins healthy unless you actively take business away from someone – either from direct competitors, or from businesses outs...

Click here to view the embedded video. When Michael Lewis wrote his article on Coach Leach and the Texas Tech Football program, that program was known as an offensive powerhouse that relied on sheer scoring power to outgun opponents.  Its defense wasn’t mentioned in that article, and one can only...

When people are confident of their next paycheck, they have a predisposition to buy most of their “because I want itâ€� items that are within financial reach (and maybe even just out of reach as well – hence the credit card).  That’s because their psychic pain threshold for buying is just...

Tom Peters called it “…the best article on business strategy I’ve ever read,â€� and advised his blog subscribers to “read every damn word.â€� And Tom isn’t alone in considering Michael Lewis’s sports writing to be a hidden treasure; just look at this marketing-based analysis of his b...